The shipment of IronPython 1.0 this week marks a milestone for the long-running project, aimed at developing a Python implementation on Microsoft's .Net platform, and for developers' goal of expanding .Net support for dynamic programming languages. Released through Microsoft's CodePlex shared-source portal, IronPython offers programmers a flexible, lightweight coding language. Its lead developer, Jim Hugunin, joined Microsoft to advance the project after gaining fame through his creation of Jython, a Java Python implementation.

Hugunin began work on IronPython with a contrary goal in mind: In the wake of online reports that Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) is inhospitable to dynamic languages, he decided to test the claims.